All is Lost

Redford, now in his late 70s, shines in this tense drama from JC Chandor (Margin Call). Deep into a solo voyage of the Indian Ocean, an unnamed man awakes after a collision with a shipping container. Navigation and radio equipment destroyed, the resourceful sailor finds himself facing a terrible storm and staring his own mortality in the face. A riveting and moving film. (2013 USA 106 minutes)

Deep into a solo voyage in the Indian Ocean, an unnamed man (Robert Redford) wakes to find his 39-foot yacht taking on water after a collision with a shipping container left floating on the high seas. With his navigation equipment and radio disabled, the man sails unknowingly into the path of a violent storm. Despite his success in patching the breached hull, his mariner’s intuition and a strength that belies his age, the man barely survives the tempest. Using only a sextant and nautical maps to chart his progress, he is forced to rely on ocean currents to carry him into a shipping lane in hopes of hailing a passing vessel. But with the sun unrelenting, sharks circling and his meager supplies dwindling, the ever-resourceful sailor soon finds himself staring his mortality in the face.

It shouldn’t work at all, and yet it does, splendidly. Robert Redford, utterly magnificent and giving a virtuoso performance, is alone onscreen. That’s right. Alone. In Gravity, Sandra Bullock has George Clooney for company in space. Even Life of Pi had a tiger. Redford has no one. There is Virginia Jean, but she’s a boat, a 39-footer that Redford’s unnamed character is sailing in the Indian Ocean. Then a floating shipping container rips a hole in the hull. Redford’s got trouble. And we’ve got a movie, a thrilling, nail-biting, pulse-racing adventure at sea that takes the measure of a man…Redford, who can play intelligence, wit and nuance to a camera like nobody’s business, holds us in his grip. It’s a master class in acting. Peter Travers, Rolling Stone